I Can't Recant

I Remember

My exploration of limericks, stanzas started

at poets drawn from shavings of high ambition.

Fragmented dreams, misplaced desires

etched with ink onto my Incomplete storyboard.

Rhymes and iambic pentameter

bored me – it was the thrust of emotion

that I loved, craved .

Pages to fill me with every word

then bleed me after every line.

I wrote seeds of hate and loneliness

few of joy, but all of passion.

Mindless copies of “I Am Nobody’s” and

“Quoth the Raven’s.”

I found the juxtaposition of

grinding my strengths against short comings

to spark against the madness.

Looking to capture years in #2 lead;

plastering emotions for the world

Realized

there will always be another

more creative a quicker wit.

With the wisdom of falling beauty queen,

I came of age

I grew up betwixt twangs of grief

bridges of unfathomable bliss if only for a few pages.

Does anyone even use betwixt anymore?

Desperate for relief but begging for attention

I started measuring my life in feet and meters.

These cocked moments now written in ballads

a soap-operatic alliteration of events

hoping for a different result – insanity .

I found comfort in the syntax of Chaucer

the woeful song sang in Shakespeare

I was praised for alliteration

only it happened once

the melancholy of Milton and Marvell—

twice now.

I was told I’m cynical 9^th grade

I would think it started earlier.

I hated following my early teachings

they said, “Make it rhyme”—

follow the beat of your words

make it a stitch in time,

cliché.

I have another “Modest Proposal,”

one I made when I found my voice in poetry—

screw the rules of the past

I am not who I was

screw the negativities of ‘what-if’s’

they can be changed;

screw those in my present

who bring me down—

I refuse to fall with them.